Radio communication systems, such as cellular systems (e.g., spread spectrum systems (such as Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks), or Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) networks), provide users with the convenience of mobility along with a rich set of services and features. This convenience has spawned significant adoption by an ever growing number of consumers as an accepted mode of communication for business and personal uses in terms of communicating voice and data (including textual and graphical information). As a result, cellular service providers are continually challenged to enhance their networks and services. These objectives place a premium on efficient management of network capacity.
The development of multi-carriers systems stem, in part, from the recognition that greater data rates are required to support sophisticated applications, and the general need for better system performance. One area of interest is the signaling and addressing required to support numerous terminals over the multiple carriers. Because multiple carriers are available, the number of terminals that can be serviced exceeds that of a single carrier system. Hence, the addressing scheme suitable for the single carrier system is inadequate; this poses an interesting challenge as existing protocols and standards play a key factor in development of new addressing approaches.
Another challenge is that an addressing scheme for the multi-carrier system has to consider backwards compatibility issues with respect to the single carrier system.
Therefore, there is a need for an approach to provide an efficient addressing scheme, with minimal modification of existing standards and protocols.